Customer Reviews

Miami International Piano Festival of Discovery, 2000, Vol. 1

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The Miami International Piano Festival of Discovery is well named: this two CD set offers fresh young talent in a variety of music played with all the drama of a competition. It is very well recorded and contains some truly magical moments.

There are five pianists represented here and their choices of competition entries in many ways helps define their abilities and musicality. Piotr Anderszewski offers the Bartok Opus 6 Bagatelles, electing to explore all 14 of these little pieces to keep with the unity of Bartok's conception. They are models of clean definitive performances. Denis Burstein on the other hand selects various works by Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Medtner, and Taneyev showing his penchant for the obscure as well as the well known. Kemal Gekic programs Scarlatti with Liszt and Rachmaninov and offers valid stances on each. Ilya Itin opts of an all Rachmaninov collection from the lovely 'Vocalize' through six of the Preludes. Francesco Libetta closes with paraphrases on Chopin by Godowsky and works by Debussy, Saint-Saens and Alkan.

Of interest the pianist who has become most popular with the public since this 2000 year competition is Piotr Anderszewski, but from the experience of listening to the entire group, one would expect more will come from the other four, too! A delightful set of recordings. Grady Harp, December 05